Wednesday, October 16, 2013

The Organized Crime Ring That Is the Pharmaceutical Drug Cartel

Even though the video above is a few years old now and bigger fines of $3 billion have been assessed to GlaxoSmithKline two years ago, it is a good summary of how the drug cartels operate.
Did you know that nearly 20 percent of corporate crime is being committed by companies that make products for your health?
Sad but true, no less than 19 pharmaceutical companies made AllBusiness.com's Top 100 Corporate Criminals
List for the 1990s, and the trend has continued if not increased into
the 21st Century. Crimes committed by some of the most well-known drug
companies include:

Bribery, illegal kick-backs, and defrauding Medicare, Medicaid, and even the FDA

Immoral threat and intimidation tactics (recall the international drug company Merck actually had a hit list of doctors to be "neutralized" or discredited for criticizing the lethally dangerous painkiller Vioxx. "We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live," a Merck employee wrote, according to an email excerpt read in court.)

Pulling Back the Curtain on Organized Crime

Fortunately, organizations like the Bureau of Investigative Journalism,1 the False Claims Act Legal Center,2 and Politicol News3 have all started investigating and publicizing the criminal actions these companies have been getting away with for decades.
Most recently, the British Medical Journal’s blog featured an article4 by former BMJ editor and director of the United Health Group’s chronic disease initiative, Richard Smith, aptly titled: "Is the Pharmaceutical Industry Like the Mafia?"

The piece is also the foreword to the book, Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare, written by Peter
Gøtzsche, head of the Nordic Cochrane Centre, which is considered the
gold standard in terms of independent research reviews.
In related news, a recently published study concluded that most drug commercials are misleading or outright false.5
There’s a literal mountain of evidence proving that pharmaceutical
companies are untrustworthy at best, and criminal at worst. And yet
they’re the backbone of our modern “healthcare” system...
Even Forbes Magazine6
recently published an article with the provocative headline: "Is Big
Pharma Addicted To Fraud?" and asked out loud “whether any aspect of the
pharmaceutical business can be trusted.”

Is It Fair to Compare the Pharmaceutical Industry with the Mafia?

If you depend on conventional medical care to address your health
problems, then you’re basically entrusting your health to organizations
that clearly have far more interest in their bottom line than your
health. In his article, Is the Pharmaceutical Industry Like the Mafia? Smith writes:7

“The characteristics of organized crime, racketeering, is defined
in US law as the act of engaging repeatedly in certain types of
offence, including extortion, fraud, federal drug offenses, bribery,
embezzlement, obstruction of justice, obstruction of law enforcement,
tampering with witnesses, and political corruption.

Peter [Gøtzsche] produces evidence, most of it detailed, to support his
case that pharmaceutical companies are guilty of most of these offenses.

And he is not the first to compare the industry with the Mafia or
mob. He quotes a former vice-president of Pfizer, who has said:

‘It is scary how many similarities there are between this
industry and the mob. The mob makes obscene amounts of money, as does
this industry. The side effects of organized crime are killings and
deaths, and the side effects are the same in this industry. The mob
bribes politicians and others, and so does the drug industry…’

Smith also notes that many more people are killed by the
pharmaceutical industry than the mob. Prescription drugs also kill far
more people than illegal drugs, and while most major causes of
preventable deaths are declining, those from prescription drug use are
on the incline.8,9
For example, prescription drug fatalities more than doubled among
teens and young adults between 2000 and 2008, and more than tripled
among people aged 50 to 69.
Legal prescription drug abuse is a silent epidemic, and is part of
the reason why the modern American medical system has become one of the leading causes of death and injury in the United States.

An estimated 450,000 preventable medication-related adverse events occur in the US every year. Merck’s painkiller Vioxx alone killed more than 60,000 people within a few years’ time before being withdrawn from the market.

“... [T]he benefits of drugs are exaggerated, often because of
serious distortions of the evidence behind the drugs, a ‘crime’ that can
be attributed confidently to the industry,” Smith writes.“The
great doctor William Osler famously said that it would be good for
humankind and bad for the fishes if all the drugs were thrown into the
sea.

He was speaking before the therapeutic revolution in the middle
of the 20th century that led to penicillin, other antibiotics, and many
other effective drugs, but Peter comes close to agreeing with him and
does speculate that we would be better off without most psychoactive
drugs, where the benefits are small, the harms considerable, and the
level of prescribing massive.”

'Science-Based' Medicine Has Fallen on Its Own Sword

There are many areas within which corruption can take root, and the
drug industry has nurtured corruption in most if not all of them. It
would require an entire book to begin to address them all, which is
exactly what Peter Gøtzsche has done in his book, Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare.

One of the most dangerous forms of corruption is that which occurs
within medical science. For example, according to data from Thomson
Reuters,10 the number of retractions of scientific studies have increased more than 15-fold since 2001, and a review11published just last year showed that nearly 75 percent of all retracted drug studies were attributed to “scientific misconduct,” which includes:

Data falsification or fabrication

Questionable veracity

Unethical author conduct

Plagiarism

Corruption of science is incredibly serious, as health care
professionals rely on published studies to make treatment
recommendations, and large numbers of patients can be harmed when false
findings are published. The average lag time between publication of the
study and the issuing of a retraction is 39 months. And that's if the misconduct is ever caught at all. What’s worse, about 32 percent of retractions are never published,12 leaving the readers completely in the dark about the inaccuracies in those studies!

Poster Children for Corrupted Science

One clear example of how deadly corrupted science can be is the
painkiller Vioxx. There were many indications that this would be a
dangerous drug, despite Merck’s claims, and I warned my readers to avoid
it before its FDA approval in 1999. In 2008, four years after the drug was withdrawn from the market, an editorial13 published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) suggested Merck might have deliberately manipulated dozens of academic documents published in the medical literature, in order to promote Vioxx under false pretenses.
The diabetes drug Avandia is another potent example. Between 1999 and 2007, Avandia is estimated to have caused over 80,000 unnecessary heart attacks,14
although the actual numbers of people harmed or killed by the drug is
still largely unknown. Avandia is a poster child for the lethal paradigm
of corrupted science as GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the manufacturer of
Avandia, hid damaging information about the drug for over 10 years, as they knew it would adversely affect sales!
Two years ago, GSK agreed to a $3 billion settlement
over the sales and marketing practices of several of its drugs,
including Avandia. This was the largest federal drug-company settlement
in US history, surpassing the $2.3 billion paid by Pfizer in 2009
(see video above) for illegally promoting off-label uses of four of its
drugs. Most recently, GSK’s crooked ways made international headlines
yet again when Chinese authorities arrested four of the company’s senior
executives on charges of cash and sexual bribery. Another 18 GSK
employees and medical personnel were also reportedly detained.15 As reported by The Guardian:16

“The Chinese authorities have accused GSK of acting like a criminal "godfather", using a network of 700 middlemen and travel agencies to bribe doctors with £320m [$489 million] cash and sexual favors in return for prescribing GSK drugs. Gao said the police have evidence that bribery has been a 'core part' of GSK China's business model since 2007.” [Emphasis mine]

As Smith writes in the featured article:

“The drug industry has systematically corrupted science to play
up the benefits and play down the harms of their drugs... the industry
has bought doctors, academics, journals, professional and patient
organizations, university departments, journalists, regulators, and
politicians. These are the methods of the mob.The book doesn’t let doctors and academics avoid blame... doctors
and academics are supposed to have a higher calling. Laws that are
requiring companies to declare payments to doctors are showing that very
high proportions of doctors are beholden to the drug industry and that
many are being paid six figures sums for advising companies or giving
talks on their behalf. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that these
‘key opinion leaders’ are being bought. They are the ‘hired guns’ of the
industry.

And, as with the mob, woe be to anybody who whistleblows or gives
evidence against the industry. Peter tells several stories of
whistleblowers being hounded, and John Le Carré’s novel describing drug
company ruthlessness became a bestseller and a successful Hollywood
film.”

New Study Finds Most Drug Commercials Misleading

In related news, a recent study17
concluded that a majority of American drug commercials—60 percent of
prescription drug ads, and 80 percent of ads for over-the-counter (OTC)
drugs—are either misleading or outright false. Lead author Adrienne E.
Faerber told Scientific American:18

“There were cases of blatant lying, but these half-truths form more than half of our analysis.”

In all, the researchers analyzed 84 prescription and 84 OTC drug ads
aired on major networks between 2008 and 2010. Ads deemed to be
“potentially misleading” omitted important information, exaggerated
information, made lifestyle associations, or expressed opinions. Ads
making false claims were either factually false or unsubstantiated. Ads
promoting erectile dysfunction drugs were among the worst offenders. OTC
drugs, which are overseen by the Federal Trade Commission and not the
FDA, were also more likely to be misleading or false. Overall, a mere 33
percent of drug ads were found to be “objectively true.”
Interestingly enough, other research published in the journal Psychological Science19,20
found that warnings of adverse side effects in drug ads can actually
backfire over time. While initially making viewers cautious, over the
course of time people tend to ignore the warnings. People even began to
see the warning as "an indication of the firm's honesty and
trustworthiness!" According to the authors:

“In four studies, we demonstrated this phenomenon. For example,
participants could buy cigarettes or artificial sweeteners after viewing
an ad promoting the product. Immediately afterward, the quantity that
participants bought predictably decreased if the ad they saw included a
warning about adverse side effects. With temporal distance (product to
be delivered 3 months later, or 2 weeks after the ad was viewed),
however, participants who had seen an ad noting the benefits of the
product but warning of risky side effects bought more than those who had
seen an ad noting only benefits.”

But Who Is Behind the Drug Companies?

While it is true that there were fines of $2 billion and $3 billion
against the drug companies, that really pales in comparison to the fines
being leveraged against the financial industry. JP Morgan will likely
receive an $11 billion dollar fine.21This
level of fine doesn’t even begin to come close to what these criminal
institutions really deserve for how they have ruined the US economy.
But keeping the article focused on health, you have to wonder if
there is some common thread here and I believe there is. The drug
companies are typically owned by other corporations. Just as the
featured video shows, the shell game that Pfizer played shielded them by
developing tiered lower-level corporations. What is rarely ever
explained is that the corporate shield also runs in the other direction.
The primary owners of most of these drug companies are the
international banksters that are responsible for most of the problems we
see not only in the health arena, but in all areas of the world.

How To Avoid Becoming a Disease Statistic

Ultimately, the take-home message here is that even if a drug or
treatment is "backed by science," this in no way guarantees it is safe
or effective. Likewise, if an alternative treatment has not been published in a medical journal, it does not mean it is unsafe or ineffective. Also, when a drug or treatment does come with warnings, do yourself a favor and don’t tuck that information into some recessed corner in the back of your mind!
You've got to use all the resources available to you, including your
own sense of common sense and reason, true experts' advice and other's
experiences, to determine what medical treatment or advice will be best
for you in any given situation. I advise you to remain skeptical but
open -- even if it is something I'm saying, you need to realize that YOU
are responsible for your and your family's health, not me, and
certainly not drug companies trying to sell their wares and convince you
to take dangerous "symptom-cover-ups" disguised as science-based
solutions.
When it comes to health, an ounce of prevention is certainly better
than a pound of cure, especially when the cure comes in a pill. Please
keep in mind that leading a common-sense, healthy lifestyle is your best bet
to achieve and maintain a healthy body and mind. And while conventional
medical science may flip-flop back and forth in its recommendations,
there are certain basic tenets of optimal health (and healthy weight)
that do not change, including the following:

Proper Food Choices: For a comprehensive guide on which foods to eat and which to avoid, see my nutrition plan.
Generally speaking, you should be looking to focus your diet on whole,
ideally organic, unprocessed foods. For the best nutrition and health
benefits, you will want to eat a good portion of your food raw.

Avoid sugar,
and fructose in particular. All forms of sugar have toxic effects when
consumed in excess, and drive multiple disease processes in your body,
not the least of which is insulin resistance, a major cause of chronic
disease and accelerated aging. I believe the two primary keys for
successful weight management are severely restricting carbohydrates
(sugars, fructose, and grains) in your diet, and increasing healthy fat
consumption. This will optimize insulin and leptin levels, which is key
for maintaining a healthy weight and optimal health.

Regular exercise: Even if you're eating the
healthiest diet in the world, you still need to exercise to reach the
highest levels of health, and you need to be exercising effectively,
which means including high-intensity activities into your rotation.
High-intensity interval-type training boosts human growth hormone
(HGH) production, which is essential for optimal health, strength and
vigor. HGH also helps boost weight loss. So along with
core-strengthening exercises, strength training, and stretching, I highly recommend that twice a week you do Peak Fitness exercises, which raise your heart rate up to your anaerobic threshold for 20 to 30 seconds, followed by a 90-second recovery period.

Stress Reduction: You cannot be optimally
healthy if you avoid addressing the emotional component of your health
and longevity, as your emotional state plays a role in nearly every
physical disease -- from heart disease and depression, to arthritis and
cancer. Meditation, prayer, social support and exercise are all viable
options that can help you maintain emotional and mental equilibrium. I
also strongly believe in using simple tools such as the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) to address deeper, oftentimes hidden, emotional problems.

Maintain a healthy gut: About 80 percent of
your immune system resides in your gut, and research is stacking up
showing that probiotics—beneficial bacteria—affect your health in a
myriad of ways; it can even influence your ability to lose weight. A healthy diet is the ideal way to maintain a healthy gut, and regularly consuming traditionally fermented foods is the easiest, most cost effective way to ensure optimal gut flora.

Avoid as many chemicals, toxins, and pollutants as possible: This includes tossing out your toxic household cleaners,
soaps, personal hygiene products, air fresheners, bug sprays, lawn
pesticides, and insecticides, just to name a few, and replacing them
with non-toxic alternatives.

Get plenty of high quality sleep:
Regularly catching only a few hours of sleep can hinder metabolism and
hormone production in a way that is similar to the effects of aging and
the early stages of diabetes. Chronic sleep loss may speed the onset or
increase the severity of age-related conditions such as type 2 diabetes,
high blood pressure, obesity, and memory loss.